Amazon’s spot market for computing power is set up as an open market for surplus servers. The price is dynamic and depends on demand. So, when demand is low, you can get computing instances for rock-bottom prices. When you do that, you normally set a range of prices you’re willing to pay. If it goes…
Everyone is hot under the collar again. So-called serverless or no-ops services are popping up everywhere allowing you to deploy “just code” into the cloud. Not only won’t you have to login to a server, you won’t even have to know they’re there. In this guide, I’m going to provide you with 30 questions that…
What does a cloud computing expert need to know? In part one of the cloud interview guide we covered some basic unix & Linux systems administration skills, and cloud computing and infrastructure concepts. Those are key starting points. You might also want to jump to part 3 cloud dba, architecture and management interview questions. In this second part,…
What does a cloud computing expert need to know? How do you hire a cloud computing expert? Competition for operations & DBAs is fierce, so you’ll want to know how to find the best. If you’re a systems administrator or ops guy, you may want to prepare for an interview for such a position. Meanwhile, if…
Don’t believe me that you’re headed for the cliff? Here is the explanation why your cloud is speeding for a scalability cliff. A Startup Scales Up to No Avail Towards the end of 2012, I worked with an internet startup in the online education space. Their web application was not unusual, built in PHP and…
If you’re getting DB2 SQL Error SQLCODE 551 SQLSTATE 42501, chances are your user account doesn’t have the required privilege. Perhaps, you use a different user account from other clients. So, try to grant access to the account you’re using to run the query. The actual error message here is the SQLCODE -551, which corresponds…
Often when we think about speeding up and scaling, we focus on the application layer itself. We look at the web server tier, and database tier, and optimize the most resource-intensive pages. There’s much more we can do to speed things up if we only turn over the right stones. Whether you’re using WordPress or…
Today part of Amazon Web Services failed, taking down with it a slew of startups that all run on Amazon’s Cloud infrastructure. Airbnb was one of the biggest, but also Heroku, Reddit, Minecraft, Flipboard & Coursera were down with it. As it’s, you might think what the heck happened, and why should we care? Well, this…
If you’re headhunting a cloud computing expert, specifically someone who knows Amazon Web Services (AWS) and EC2, you’ll want to have a battery of questions to ask them to assess their knowledge. As with any technical interview focus on concepts and the big picture. As the 37Signals folks like to say “hire for attitude, train for skill”. Absolutely!…
In a recent buzzfeed piece, NYPD goes to the mat with Palantir over their data. It seems the NYPD has recently gotten cold feet. As they explored options, they found an alternative that might save them a boatload of money. They considered switching to an IBM alternative called Cobalt. And I mean this is Silicon Valley, what…